Looking at pictures of me as a baby, you might just laugh. Why? While everyone has their silly baby pictures, mine happen to be a little bit sillier due to the fact that as a child I couldn’t really see things clearly. I have astigmatism, and for a short period of my time on this earth, I was a googly-eyed infant. My world was a blurry one and at the age of one, this was fixed with the help of glasses. I made the big switch to contacts in the sixth grade, but when I don’t have lenses attached to my cornea - I wear my glasses. Oh, glasses. There are certain things that only those who wear glasses will understand so let’s get started, shall we?
1. I will never know what it’s like to be able to actually see without the help of corrective lenses.
It’s such a strange concept to me that people wake up in the morning and can just see things clearly. No squinting, no glasses on their face, or contacts in their eyes. What a world!
2. The good old, “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Elementary and middle school were great times, weren’t they? Peers loved to test my vision by holding up a certain amount of fingers and seeing if I could actually tell how many they were holding up. However, that’s not really how my faulty vision works. I can see general shapes and outlines of things, just not all of the details.
3. Losing your glasses or contacts.
Whenever I lose my glasses or drop a contact, it’s possibly the universe’s cruelest joke. I’m trying to find something when I literally can’t see. I lose my glasses but I need my glasses to find my glasses. I suddenly turn into Velma from Scooby Doo saying, “Glasses? Where are my glasses?” With my hands reached out in front of me desperately hoping to feel the familiarity of my frames hit my fingers.
4. People just love to try glasses on!
My favorite has to be when friends try on my glasses and say, “Woah, you’re really blind!” Really? If I wasn’t, I really wouldn’t need those things.
5. 3-D Movies.
All of the 3-D movies as a child I had to sit through looking like a dweeb with my 3D glasses over my actual glasses. Also that one time I lost one of my contacts in a movie theater and had to sit through an entire movie with my hand covering one eye. Sigh.
6. Weather has never been my friend.
When sunny weather comes and I decide to wear glasses I make the choice to be able to see things clearly but also to be blinded by the bright sunlight. When it’s raining and I wear glasses I make the decision to just suffer through rain drop decorated lenses. When it’s cold outside and I wear glasses then go from outside to inside, the lenses get all foggy. And I can forget trying to sip hot beverages on a cold day. I can never win.
While I do wish I had 20/20 vision, these are the cards I have been dealt - or rather, eyes I have been given. Although this is a list of complaints about wearing glasses, I am forever thankful and amazed that lenses to correct my poor vision exist. Science is crazy. Who knows, maybe one day I'll get LASIK and all of these problems will be a thing of the past, but until then this is my blurry little world.
